You Might Be a Gamer If...
Losing your dice bag would be a serious financial blow. You could paper you bathroom in character sheets. You could paper your bathroom in different versions of just one character. You talk about your characters as if they are real people. You have more entertaining "no-shit-there-I-was" game stories than you do anecdotes about your family. You alternate between referring to your characters in the first and the third person. :... And none of your friends gets confused. You foam at the mouth when a Newb can't Grok the difference between a Munchkin, a Power-Gamer and a Rules Lawyer. You foam at the mouth when a Newbie can't Grok the proper way to use a d4. You didn't flinch at all over the word "grok", either of the times it was just used. You've ever spent a significant fraction of your life modifying game rules that you didn't like. :... And, as soon as the system worked to your satisfaction, discarded it. When someone says "the blue books," you don't automatically picture the kind that they give you during a college final exam. You either worship idols of Gary Gygax in your basement or burn Gary Gygax in effigy in your back yard. You will not buy comic books with the Dragon Strike logo on the back. You will hit anyone who calls you a Munchkin. In the mouth. And then you'll kick them in the ribs when they're down. You've ever seen the old Dungeons and Dragons TV series. You hang out with people you actively dislike because they give good roleplay. You've ever gotten into a screaming match over something that happened in a game. You've ever neglected to buy the new edition of your favorite game because you already have three. Your body has been specially conditioned to go without sleep for three nights running, thanks to those Memorial-weekend Conventions. You sneer at Goths because they remind you of those pretentious LARPers. :You were one of those LARPers. ::You didn't flinch at all over the word "LARPers". You have heard a dozen disparaging nicknames for collectible card games. You openly wept when TSR was bought out by WOTC. You openly wept at the news that WOTC was bought out by Hasbro. :... But you openly cheered at the news that Hasbro was bought out by Lucasfilm, because this means that maybe a well-supported Star Wars Roleplaying Game is coming! You have spent over one week on a character portrait. You eventually submitted the character portrait for your college art final, and then had to spend an hour explaining the character's background to the art teacher. You have ever thrown dice at another player. And they threw more dice back. :... And then everyone was throwing dice. ::... And were using two handfuls. At the same time. You have ever lost track of time while gaming by twelve hours or more. Gaming is the only reason you've ever witnessed a sunrise. You have gained extensive real-life scientific knowledge as a side effect of character background research. :... You know all about Satanism for the same reason. ::... Ditto for Catholicism. You learned martial arts so that you would know what was "realistic" and what wasn't, and demonstrate moves and strikes to make your point while arguing with the GM. :... It didn't occur to you that the GM would feel threatened by this. ::... And he wasn't. You have more than one photocopied bootleg of a gaming text. You keep old characters around just in case someone might run that system again. (Never mind that its TS: SI) You knew what I meant when I said TS:SI. You have a PhD in manipulating point systems to the best effect, even though you failed high school geometry. You're still reading this list. You can consume your body weight in junk food in one gaming session. You consider Altoids, salt-and-vinegar chips, and blue teeni hugs a balanced diet. (Or even an acceptable combination.) You have been known to drive to far away places where you paid enormous amounts of money for the privilege of sleeping on floors, eating crap, buying little pewter statues of Gandalf, and meeting dozens of psychopathic members of the alternate (or similar) sex who will follow you around for months, merely for the pleasure of playing with gamers you don't know. :... And then once there signed up en masse with all of you friends to play in games with game masters who you've known since high school. You own your own weight in gaming books. Your character stands a better chance of getting a job than you do. Your character sheets are longer than your resume. Whenever you do something that makes you look like a klutz you say "Must have failed a DEX check." :... And your friends laugh knowingly in reaction. You know the difference between magic, witchcraft, and sorcery. You've had arguments about the difference between magic, witchcraft, and sorcery. You've tried converting your favorite comic book hero over to your favorite superhero game format... :... And then quit in anger because you had to break several rules to make them fit into said game format You've had passionate discussions with your friends about what you'd do in real life with 10 points of Champions powers. Neither you nor your friends ever start a sentence with the phrase "I wish" just in case you own an item that contains wishes... :... And the above statement applies both in and out of character. You complain when the GM won't let your character speak more than six languages even though in real life, after two years of foreign language training, you haven't mastered the vocabulary possessed by an average eight year old speaker of a single foreign language. The owners of local hobby stores take your checks without ID because they know where you live. You can do AD&D money conversions in your head. You considered the demise of What's New With Phil & Dixie a blow to great literature. You consider the resurrection of What's New With Phil & Dixie the one redeeming feature of Magic: The Gathering. You've ever designed your own character sheets. You can be more that three NPCs at the same time without generating more than reasonable confusion in your players. You've ever tried to explain gaming to a school counselor, parent, or other PWOC. You understood that PWOC meant "person without a clue". The PWOC understood gaming once you were done, and wanted to try it. You've played Talisman more than once. :You've finished a game of Talisman. ::... More than once. You've mistaken a d12 or a double d10 for a d20 while playing AD&D and had a THAC0 low enough to hit the 8HD monster, anyway. You understood that last one. You've ever discovered, after gaming with your significant other, that you like their character better than you do them. You spend more money on dice than on food. You have ever played a character who had sex before you did in reality. Your first response to any frustrating situation is, "I bash it with my axe." You know a lot of gaming jokes that used to be funny once. Your non-gaming friends feel very left out of all of your conversations. You have more gaming books than the local hobby store. You've discovered that spare dice make good beanbag filler. You knew that that last question was a ringer. Who has more dice than they can use? You're still reading this list. You have a copy of "dark dungeons" kicking around somewhere because: * You thought it was funny, or: :* Your parents got concerned that you were becoming a Satanist. You've been gaming for more than half of your life. You still laugh when someone says "Hey, Dave, I think the barbarian in the corner wants another beer." The phrase "Collect Call of Cthulhu" brings back fond memories. You can quote the whole "Trolls! Mutants! Trolls! Mutants!" Strip from What's New With Phil & Dixie. You've been known to have in-depth conversations about the relative merits of champions, v&v, marvel, and dc heroes, despite the fact that superhero games tend to be inherently sucky. You like one of the above systems enough that you yelped when I called them all, "sucky." You've thought of four or five additions to this list. Someone is attempting to explain the floorplan of a building to you and you immediately start thinking in terms of 10x10 squares. :... Or 6'x6' hexes. Your first though upon walking into a friend's domicile is to reflect on where you'd put the machine-gun nest. You've ever gotten weird looks from other customers at places like Denny's or IHOP because of the nature of your conversations. You've ever argued against a combat rule based on your experience in the SCA/military/police, etc. You have a dozen things in mind for when you come across a magic lamp. When you talk about the "good old days" you mean when games cost $12 and came with their own dice. You can cite the differences between "official" Star Trek, FASA Star Trek, and Star Fleet Battles. You remember when games gave you tips on "inking" dice with crayon. You can give no fewer than six different speeches on "What is Roleplaying?", verbatim, from the introductions to different games. There is virtually no game for which you cannot name the genre, company, or country of origin. You remember when all games referred to characters as "he". You've written character histories that are longer than most novels... :...for Paranoia characters. ::... You understand why the last one is funny. You own copies of Dragon Magazine that are numbered below 100. You remember when White Dwarf was a Dungeons and Dragons magazine. While you have a number of close acquaintences, your only true friends are gamers. You've ever personally written a letter or an email to a game designer. :... And they replied. From where you are now, sitting in front of your computer, you can look around and see all or most of your gaming material. You find yourself teaching new players the ropes so often, you now have a down-pat speech, readily translatable to any game system for newcomers. You search the internet nightly for cool gaming software for your PC. :...and you found this list by doing that! ::... And you add to this list, to keep the spirit of gaming alive! You learned more about space, physics, and other sciences from playing Traveller than you did watching watching Cosmos, hosted by Carl Sagan. You were around when SPI was. You even know what SPI was. You not only know who SPI was, but you still have some of their games around. You were around when the only games out were Dungeons and Dragons, Metamorphosis Alpha, Gamma World, and Traveller. :...and you bought 'em, cause they were "what the cool grown-up college kids were playing." You remained loyal thorough the right-wing religious anti-gaming crusade. You know what to say (delicately, without sloppy missionary fervor) when someone says, "Oh, you don't play that "Dungeons & Dragons thing, do you?" You know the real tragic truth about Dallas Egbert. :...and you learned it by reading the book on it, "The Dungeon Master." You met your spouse at a game. You've said, "roll initiative" more times than you've sung your countries' national anthem. You're still reading this list! You're really thinking of adding to this list, now. You read the issue of What's New With Phil & Dixie which included the quote "Hey, the phone is circular-metal-banding!" :...and you thought it was funny. ::... and you knew why it was funny. ::... And you're remembering it now, and how funny it was. You've played Raistlin. You've played mages far more powerful than Raistlin. You know what the hell I'm talking about when I mention Raistlin. You're getting more and more worried the further you go down this list, because it's getting closer and closer to reality. :...or you weren't worried before, but after reading the above, you are now. You watched the film The Fifth Element and knew the answer to the final puzzle straight away. :... And so did everybody you went to see it with. You can remember the uproar over Mazes and Monsters. You were upset when Wormy disappeared, even if you didn't understand what the hell it was about. You thought the pictures in Tomb of Horrors enhanced the experience of the module... Even the "sliding into the burning pit" picture. Your character actually has a well paying job., But you have never held a steady job for more than a week. You tell your friend that spending $4500 to fix up his car was a waste of money, then go home to your $6000 dollars worth of RPG books. You're still reading this list! You consider a can of Mountain Dew and a bag of Lays Mesquite Barbecue Potato Chips to be a full meal. You make comments like "Ouch... rolled a crit!" while watching action movies. You can translate any given real-world circumstance into at least three rule systems. You built a custom table to fit your battlemat. You alter your diet to buy food in containers easily modelled into pieces for a miniatures battlefield. Your coffee table has on it a large glass bowl labelled "Leave a die, take a die." You learn new computer programming languages by constructing character-managers and die-rollers. You understand the relationship between Brian VanHoose and Alexis. :...and don't see the problem. You saw the Dungeons & Dragons movie seven times, and each time hated it more and more. You listed two or more game books in the bibliography of your senior thesis. You own more gaming CD's than music CD's. You can explain why EverQuest isn't a true RPG in mechanical terms instead of "feeling" issues. :...if you spend more than 30 seconds afterwards explaining why, by that definition, most computer "RPG's" aren't true RPG's either. If your collection of game stuff weighs more than your car. If you've ever had to use a butter tub to hold your dice. If you've ever bought a bottle of Crown Royal just for the "free dice bag". :... and the "free dice bag" wasn't large enough. You watch "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and think "My character could take all of them." If you can do the math required to build a Champions character in your head, but have trouble understanding a 1040EZ. If someone says "AP" with no other information and you intuitively know whether he is referring to Active Points or Armor Piercing. You've ever cried over the death of your character. :... You've ever cried over the death of another player's character. You've ever sworn bloody, white-hot revenge for the death of a player-character, yours or someone else's. :... You've ever sworn bloody, white-hot revenge for the death of a non-player-character. ::... You've ever enacted bloody, white-hot revenge for the death of a character (PC or NPC). :::... You've enacted such revenge on a player's character. ::::... You've enacted such revenge on a player. Replacing your roleplaying game library would cost more than replacing your car. :... You actually refer to it as a "library". ::... And none of your friends disagree with you. You learned how to use a spreadsheet program just to crunch numbers faster for character creation. You started playing a game that you thought absolutely sucked just because it was the only thing everyone else was playing. You own novelty dice, like the 5-sided and 13-sided die. :... And you figured out how to use them in your own custom system. You have several hundred half written home made game systems lying around. You've ever included people you don't like from real life as monsters in a game. You've ever assigned classes to characters in movies. You can name the make and model of any handgun you see in an actiuon movie even though you've never actually held a gun. Your Mom has ever cursed you out for the death of her character. You have ever used dice to decide whether to call in sick. You have ever made plans to live in a post-apocalyptic society. You have ever drawn up a plane for what to do if a dragon attacks the airport. You buy more miniatures, even when you have boxes and boxes of unpainted ones at home. Your senior thesis was entitled The Steve Theory of Gaming, which explored the question "Why are there are so many Steve's in role-playing." You would have more than enough dice to play a quick session if only you'd lift up the couch and sweep them into a pile. You've ever soaked your dice in single-malt scotch overnight to "charm" them for tomorrow's game. You've ever dressed as your favorite character for Halloween. You have a gaming session run from 5 pm to midnight followed by a trip to the local Denny's for dinner... and you game for three more hours at the restaurant. The most frequently heard phrase at your home is "Okay... so you're in a bar..." You've written yourself up as a player character. :... In more than one system. You've ever heard someone refer to EverQuest as "Evercrack". :... And you know why its referred as "EverCrack", but got into it anyway because all your friends were doing it. You've ever called in sick to attend a game session. :... and you got away with it because your boss was the GM. You put all your gaming books into a single pile, and the pile is taller than you are. :... Several times over. You have specific sets of dice that you only use for certain game systems. :... And backup sets, just in case you lose a die here or there. You use previous editions of your gaming books as bookends for the more recent editions. You argue about the virtues of one game system over another with the same passion and fervor that other people argue sports statistics and politics. You spent more time researching for a campaign world than for your doctoral thesis. You've ever continued role playing without dice or character sheets while walking down the sidewalk to Dairy Queen after spending the past 12 hours playing with dice and character sheets. You've dedicated the largest room in your house to gaming. You play in multiple gaming groups. :... Every week. ::... And you identify your friends by the gaming group they belong to. Your "wierd friends" are the ones that don't game. You know more about your friend's character than you do about your friend. :... And you like your friend's character better than your friend. You've done non-gaming activities (dinner, bowling, softball), in character. :... You don't understand the last one because you don't know what "non-gaming activities" means. You have finally reached the end of this list, and can think of a few things to contribute to it. Category:Background